Nature abhors
vacuums,
lies,
indecision.
Nature prefers
the persistence
of truth,
Sweet Truth.
I, too,
prefer
honesty,
to know
the process
to grow,
Sweet Growth.
What long
gains
you think
exist
without the word
‘persist’
Sweet Persistence?
One of the great thinkers and philosophers of the 20th century, the Norwegian Arne Naess, died a few years ago at the age of 96. His passing was noted in some mainstream media, but, unfortunately, few in the mainstream know of the man or, more important, his ideas. In 1995 he described himself as a short-range pessimist and a long-range optimist. “I am, to the astonishment of certain journalists, an optimist,” he said. “But then I add I am an optimist about the 22nd century. And they say: ‘Oh, you mean the 21st?’ No, 22nd century! I think that in the 21st century, we have to go through very bad times and it will hurt even rich countries. Now it is all sailing smoothly—but it will hurt the rich.”
That seems a prescient observation. It looks like very bad times ahead for rich and poor alike in this century, though, as always, poor countries will suffer more than the rich. It seems to me that Arne Naess’ ideas, which were influenced by Buddhism, Spinoza, Gandhi and Rachael Carson’s seminal book “Silent Spring,” are a sort of template for long-range optimism during short-range hard times.
Naess is best known for coining the phrase “deep ecology,” which gives a theoretical foundation for the radical (to some) idea that mankind must drastically change its relationship with nature. He viewed deep ecology as different but not necessarily incompatible or at odds with what he termed “the shallow ecology movement.” The principles of deep ecology involve the purpose of human life within nature and the human values at work in environmental conflicts. Shallow ecology stops short of questioning or changing the basic tenets of consumer driven materialism and modern industrial economics, instead promoting as good environmentalism technological solutions like recycling, energy efficiency, green building standards, solar and wind power and the like, all of which are commendable and useful but do not address what Naess viewed as the root causes of, among other things, the 21st century’s bad times.
Naess’ ideas, careers as a philosopher, teacher (the youngest at 27 to ever become a professor at the University of Oslo), one of Norway’s leading mountaineers and environmental/social activists are too deep (sic) for a small column, but just these four of the eight points of the deep ecology platform are worth contemplating: 1) The well-being and flourishing of human and nonhuman life on Earth have value in themselves (synonyms: inherent worth; intrinsic value; inherent value). These values are independent of the usefulness of the nonhuman world for human purposes… 4) Present human interference with the nonhuman world is excessive, and the situation is rapidly worsening… 6) Policies must therefore be changed. The changes in policies affect basic economic, technological and ideological structures. The resulting state of affairs will be deeply different from the present… 7) The ideological change is mainly that of appreciating life quality (dwelling in situations of inherent worth) rather than adhering to an increasingly higher standard of living. There will be a profound awareness of the difference between big and great.
There are several good books and plenty of information readily available about Deep Ecology and Arne Naess for those who are interested in, for instance, the personal, social and environmental ramifications of humans “…appreciating life quality (dwelling in situations of inherent worth) rather than adhering to an increasingly higher standard of living.”
Most people reading this know many people who do adhere to an increasingly higher standard of living while not dwelling in situations of inherent worth, perhaps, in some cases, the reader included. And most people on earth are aware at some level that “Present human interference in the nonhuman world is excessive, and the situation is rapidly worsening.” Far too many people do not know, or accept, or want to believe that “The well-being and flourishing of human and nonhuman life on Earth have value in themselves…independent of the usefulness of the nonhuman world for human purposes.” But who among us could object to “…a profound awareness of the difference between big and great?”
Arne Naess was often misunderstood and attacked by people threatened by his ideas, sometimes called things like “eco-fascist.” But Naess always insisted that widening compassion towards non-humans did not imply diminishing compassion towards humans. He said, “We don’t say that every living being has the same value as a human, but that it has an intrinsic value which is not quantifiable. It is not equal or unequal. It has a right to live and blossom. I may kill a mosquito if it is on the face of my baby but I will never say I have a higher right to life than a mosquito.”
The world lost one of the great men of the past hundred years when Naess died, but if there is cause for optimism about humanity and planet Earth in the 22nd century it is in some significant part because he lived and the ideas he left behind.
Check them out. We need all the causes for optimism we can find.
A communist and a capitalist are conversing in a bar after several drinks. They are similar in appearance though the capitalist is better dressed and less concerned with the appearance of his stance before the bar as perceived by other customers. The effect of the scotch whiskey has made the mind of the capitalist quick, loose and undisciplined while having the opposite effect on the communist who drinks dark ale.
Com: “Convention and respectability are the refuges of cowards and the spiritually and socially weak.”
Cap: “Communism is the refuge of the poor.”
Com: “The poor financially, not spiritually or socially.”
Cap: “Possibly, in some instances. Not always.”
Com: Economics and the income of workers are controlled by the bourgeois and Wall Street. The people have no control and there is nothing they can do about their poverty except to change the system.”
Cap: “The spirit of a man is developed, or snuffed out like a candle flame in a strong wind, by the society he is born into and by the church of that society two hundred years earlier.”
Com: “There is no God.”
Cap: “Maybe, but there is a church.”
Com: “A tool of power hiding behind bourgeois respectability and convention in a stupid, corrupt society.”
Cap: “A very handy tool to control people who like to be controlled, like communists.”
Com: “Just because we lack power does not mean we like to be controlled. At any rate we will destroy the church along with convention and the rest of the bourgeoisie.”
Cap: “By killing people in the revolution?”
Com: “Yes. It’s the only way to get them off our backs.”
Cap: “(Sarcastically) Brotherhood!”
Com: “Certain measures are necessary to achieve true brotherhood.”
Cap: “Murdering the bourgeois?”
Com: (shrugging) “They are not brothers.”
Cap: “Bullshit. It’s a small family you have if everyone has to think and be like you to be a brother and sister. You guys are hypocritical bastards.”
Com: “Don’t get mad. I like you. You’re one of us.”
Cap: “Bullshit. I’m not, at least not unless everyone is one of us.”
Com: “I think you are. I know it. I can feel it.”
Cap: “Well, forget it. Your feelings don’t seem to match your thinking. Let’s talk about something else.”
Com: “Sure.”
Cap: “Have another drink?”
Com: “Of course.”
Cap: (To the bartender) “Two more.”
The scotch and ale are served and the communist and the capitalist silently contemplate the bar, the drinks and their own reflections in the mirror behind the bar.
Cap: “What do you do?”
Com: “I’m a pimp.”
Cap: “Not very respectable.” (chuckles)
Com: “That doesn’t matter. What do you do?”
Cap: “I paint.”
Com: “Houses?”
Cap: “No, paintings. Art.”
Com: “To show what?”
Cap: “The soul of man.”
Com: “He has no soul. That’s an invention of the church.”
Cap: “His spirit then.”
Com: “Is your spirit strong?”
Cap: “I’m not a communist.”
Com: “You mean you paint for yourself?”
Cap: “That’s right.”
Com: “Then you are corrupt and your work serves no purpose.”
Cap: “That’s wrong. My work inspires and informs people, and it brings them beauty. Besides, you bloody hypocrite, what purpose does your work serve?”
Com: “I’m the middle man, a functional part of the business, as necessary to society as a grocery store.”
Cap: “You are a pimp.”
Com: “It is only temporary.”
Cap: “What is more corrupt than a pimp?”
Com: “A priest, a politician, a money lender, a thief, a liar, a whore.”
Cap: “No. If she is a good whore she gives pleasure and is honorable. A good pimp is just a pimp.”
Com: “A man’s got to live.”
Cap: “You are a bloody hypocrite.”
Com: “It will be a different world after we take over.”
Cap: “You’ll still be a hypocrite.”
Com: “I’ll have an important position in the government.”
Cap: “Your reward for being a pimp?” (chuckles)
Com: “No, for my loyalty and working hard for the cause. I’m a faithful worker.”
Cap: “Bullshit!”
Com: “Huh! What will you be after we throw over this corrupt system?”
Cap: “Dead.”
Com: “No, seriously.”
Cap: “A painter.”
Com: “You have no ambition. You don’t care about making this a better world.”
Cap: “I like what I do. I want to stay a painter, become a better one if I can. A good painting makes a better world. That’s ambition.”
Com: “You have no hope. See what bourgeois morality has done to you? You want things to stay the same.”
Cap: “Oh, hell. Forget it!”
Com: (leaning closer) “You know, after the revolution I might be able to get you a position in the government.”
Cap: “Horizontal or vertical?”
Com: “What?”
Cap: “Forget it.”
Com: “You’re a strange one.”
Cap: “The hell with it. Let’s have another drink.” (Finishes his scotch in a gulp.)
Com: “Okay.” (Finishes his ale.)
Cap: (To the bartender) “Two more.”
They drink.
Com: “Say, are you interested in a girl?”
Cap: “I might be.”
Com: “I know where there are some good ones.”
Cap: “I’ll bet you do.”
Com: “Interested?”
Cap: “Sure. Why not?”
Com: “Okay. Since you are a friend of mine—I like you—I’ll make sure you have the very best and it won’t cost you much.”
Cap: “Yeah?”
Com: “Really.”
Cap: “I believe you.”
Com: “Let’s go. It’s not far.”
They finish their drinks, the capitalist pays the bill and the two leave the bar and walk slowly down the street.
After the capitalist and the communist leave, the bartender washes their glasses, wipes them thoroughly and then places the ale glass with the other ale glasses and the scotch whiskey glass with its brother whiskey glasses back on the shelf behind the bar with the others.
A glacier is an exotic phenomenon of nature. It is born with a snowflake and dies when its last bit of ice turns to moisture and sinks into the earth, rises into the atmosphere or runs back home to the sea. Most people have never seen a glacier except, perhaps, at a distance. Few have actually stood, walked or climbed on one and seen and felt its majesty and menace, life and movement, beauty and connections to one’s own existence. Those who do are most often adventurers or natives of the far reaches of the earth whose subsistence is tied to knowledge of ice. Fewer still, most of them scientists in esoteric fields, have any intellectual understanding of the value of glaciers and the larger world of natural ice near the poles and their relationship to deserts, starvation in Africa, agriculture in South America, survival of the polar bear and, perhaps, mankind itself.
The ice of glaciers is, among other things, a repository of the natural history of earth, and most of its glaciers are retreating and vanishing and no one knows exactly what that might mean or what is to be done about it. Every mountaineer I know has seen it. Every person knowledgeable and concerned about global warming, the expanding desertification of earth, the compounding rate of species extinctions, the multitudes of people who are starving to death as these words are read, and the “totality of all life” given form and expression through the intricate connections between all things, like the toxic pollution of an oil refinery in Texas and the death of the last polar bear in the arctic, knows that global warming is melting the glaciers and the polar ice. Scientists have measured the decline of ice, as many with less formal training have noted it, but no one knows what it portends or what might be its consequences to the earth, its wildlife and oceans and to the heart and soul and future of man. No sane, honest person thinks it is good.
All too many people, especially those in the most polluting corporate industries and their pals in the halls of power in Washington whose parochial worldview is narrow and cramped and hardly a millimeter above the bottom line, don’t care. Who cares if a few glaciers vanish? With all the ice in the arctic and Antarctic, what does it matter if some of it melts? Even if the atmosphere is warming up a few degrees, it’s not very much and isn’t it just part of nature’s eternal cycles? But in the real world of reality, the real melting of glaciers is the result of man’s greed and carelessness, and it is only an illusion that he is superior to nature and that commerce and economic matters are his purpose on earth.
In her beautiful book, “The Future of Ice,” American writer Gretel Ehrlich carves out her own answers to such questions, and she inspires the reader to examine why they need to be asked in the first place. The book relates her travels in glacier/polar landscapes over the course of a year from Tierra del Fuego in the south to Spitsbergen, east of Greenland, in the north in search to the answer to this question: “…what would happen if we became ‘deseasoned,’ if winter disappeared as a result of global warming.” Ehrlich’s work is not easily categorized, but she has few peers in creating evocative prose about the landscape through which she moves and her own personal inner landscape which moves her. That the two worlds are not separate, that they are in reality impermeable and part of the same setting is a central message of “The Future of Ice.” She calls it “…both ode and lament, a wild time song and elegy, and a cry for help—not for me, but for the tern, the ice cap, the polar bear, and the lenga forest; for the river of weather and the ways it chooses to be born.”
In just one paragraph of the introduction Ehrlich touches on vulnerability, the heart, the mind, illusions and how they affect the future of ice on earth and much more. She writes: “We’re spoiled because we’ve been living in an interglacial paradise for twenty thousand years. Now we’re losing it. Climate stability, not to mention human superiority and economic viability, are illusions we must give up. Our can-do American optimism and our head-in-the-sand approach to economics when it takes into mind only profit and not the biological health of the planet—has left us one-sided. Too few of us remember how to be heartbroken. Or why we should be. We don’t look because heartbreak might imply failure. But the opposite is true. A broken heart is an open heart, like a flower unfolding from its calyx, the one nourishing the other.”
She is right. Whether or not we look, and whether we look in time to break our hearts, will determine the future of ice.
It’s always a good time to remember the work and person and legacy of Cesar Chavez, but in this time of inhumane, Trumpeting anti-immigration hatred and hysteria in some parts of American society it’s particularly useful to remember this good man. Like the rest of us, Chavez was neither saint nor made of plaster. He was flesh and blood and humanly flawed, but he contributed enormously to the well being of humanity by both the results and the personal example of his activism. He is one of the great if marginally recognized American heroes. In my view, every community in America is well served by remembering Cesar Chavez, all the more meaningful in a country in which almost 60 million people, approximately 18% of total population, and more than 22% of America’s students are Latino.
His personal example was in the non-violent tradition of Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi and St. Francis of Assisi, each of whom left the world better than they found it, as did Chavez. Born in 1927 in Arizona, one of six children of Mexican-American parents who spoke only Spanish at home, Chavez quit school before he was 15 to become a migrant farm worker so his mother wouldn’t have to work in the fields. His two years in the U.S. Navy during WWII he described as “the two worst years of my life.” After his military service Chavez married his high school sweetheart with whom he had eight children, moved to San Jose, California and supported his growing family as a migrant farm worker. In 1952 he left the fields and became an organizer for the Latino civil rights group Community Service Organization where, among other things, he was instrumental in getting Mexican-American citizens to register and vote. In 1962 he founded what eventually became the United Farm Workers (UFW) which through strikes, boycotts and gaining public support through education increased farm workers’ wages, as well as improved living and working conditions.
A vegan who believed in animal rights, Chavez undertook several fasts, one of them for 36 days, in the spirit of Catholic penance and Gandhi’s fasts to emphasize nonviolence. Among the many simple, obvious truisms that inspired Chavez and directed his actions was his awareness that violence does not enhance the well being of humanity. For that alone he is worth remembering and honoring as a person and example, not as plastic saint.
One of my prized possessions is a letter dated July 26, 1974 from Chavez. It reads, “Dear Brother Dorworth” and was dictated to someone with the initials ns and signed by Cesar Chavez. He thanks me for an embarrassingly paltry sum I had donated to the UFW to help “the striking workers, who are always in need of food and clothing.”
Few reading this, including me, know what it is to live with the daily fear and indignity of being in need of food and clothing.
Chavez and his family and friends knew about such things and he did something positive to change it. Remembering Cesar Chavez is a reminder that we each can do something positive to change that which needs changing. Silencing the Trumpet of hatred is a good place to start.
Si, se puede.
The Shambhala Dictionary of Buddhism and Zen lists the first two definitions of “dharma” as: 1. The cosmic law, the “great norm” underlying our world; above all, the law of karmically determined rebirth. And, 2. The teaching of the — Buddha, who recognized and formulated this “law”; thus the teaching that expresses the universal truth.
Buddhists take refuge in the Buddha, the dharma and the sangha, the teacher, the teachings and the community of companions on Earth. The dharma is the teaching—both received and given—by each individual practitioner in every second of every day in the normal actions, thoughts and intentions of daily life.
It is important to keep in mind that the dharma, the teaching, is continuously both given and taken as we are all students and teachers at the same time, all the time. It is a mistake to become too attached to either role. This point, in my view, deserves more consideration, discussion and contemplation than it generally receives.
The first definition mentioned above includes “karmically determined rebirth.” That is, the circumstances of our lives, according to the dharma, are a result of karma, cause and effect. How we were in the past (not just past lives) determines how and where we are in the present. How and where we are in the present and what we have learned from the past and act upon in the present determines the future. That’s the dharma.
There is neither truth nor falsehood to the dharma. The dharma is just our everyday, normal lives, and by living within the dharma, “…the teaching that expresses the universal truth,” we are able to find out for ourselves what is true and what is false. That is, the cosmic law is not a set of rules which we follow, but, rather, the never ending dynamics and lessons of each of our lives as lived each second of every day. Padmasambhava expressed the dharma this way: “If you want to know your past life, look into your present condition; if you want to know your future life, look at your present actions.”
That’s the dharma.
Look carefully.
No one else and no teaching can tell you what is true and what is false. If a teacher or a teaching indicates that it is good practice to develop a regular practice of meditation every day, that is, in my view, good advice. But the only way you can determine whether this is true for you is to practice and to remain open to what is. Is the practice true for you or not? Only you can discover for yourself what is true and what is false. All of us who are practicing are eager to learn, eager to hear and follow the teachings, eager to follow the path, eager to know what is true and what is false, eager to be certain so that we can relax and, you know, BE CERTAIN. (Eagerly certain?) But the dharma doesn’t tell us what is true and what is false. That is something we must each do for ourselves in our own lives.
The only certainty is that the circumstance of our present life, each action, thought, breath and intention of that life is the dharma. As such, it is the means, the vehicle, the alarm clock that can wake us up. Every human, not only those who practice Buddhism, is an integral part of the great norm underlying our world and affects that world with every thought, action and intention.
There is a Zen admonition to live each moment with the awareness of a warrior in the night behind enemy lines, and, for that warrior, that is the dharma. Or, as Dogen said, “If you can’t find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it?”
“If we were truly moved by the beauty of the world about us, we would honor the earth in a profound way. We would understand immediately and turn away with a certain horror from all those activities that violate the integrity of the planet.
“That we have not done so reveals that a disturbance exists at a more basic level of consciousness and on a greater order of magnitude than we dare admit to ourselves or even think about.”
Thomas Berry
To the extent that each of us is truly moved by the world’s beauty, we are conscious of its rapidly deteriorating environment. As Berry indicates, that we do not turn away with a certain horror from all that violate the planet’s integrity reveals a basic failure of consciousness.
It is an admirable politeness to say that violating the integrity of the planet, destroying the systems that maintain its environment, poisoning the home and source of all life as we know it is a disturbance of consciousness. A more ungracious if colloquial term is craziness.
Is man crazy?
Some would say Berry and others who view the state of the earth’s environment as a threat to all life are alarmist Chicken Little fantasists. Is Berry just assigning moral values to the dirty practicalities of human survival? What is the moral value of integrity, planetary or personal? What are the true costs of integrity? What are the costs of its unraveling and are some of them moral costs? Where on a list of man’s priorities falls the environmental health of the planet? We hear arguments that many people cannot be concerned about the environment because their energies are occupied with finding a job and making a living. The underlying message in this argument is that environmentalism, turning in horror from all those activities that violate the integrity of the planet, is an effete, elitist pastime for those who do not understand and perhaps do not need to deal with the dirty physical constraints of the real economic machinery of the world.
This argument reveals a disturbance of consciousness worthy of Nero or, currently, Trump. It hovers above the current and future consequences of the polluted practicalities of the real economic machinery of the world being modeled on unlimited growth on a finite planet. It avoids what is clear to basic consciousness, disturbed as well as integral: all economics, no matter what the model, are completely dependent upon and sustained by the integrity of planet earth. One turns in horror from that which violates the integrity of the planet, as one would turn in horror from an ax murderer, a poisoner of the community well, or those who sell children to sex traffickers or separate them from their parents.
To ignore or deny the evidence of the unraveling of the earth’s environmental integrity is both a basic failure of consciousness and a violation of personal integrity. Donald Trump personifies both failure and violation in just two of his many moronic quips about human caused climate change: “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.” And “When will our country stop wasting money on global warming and so many other truly “STUPID” things and begin to focus on lower taxes.” Everything is connected, the personal with the universal, the individual with the water he drinks, the air he breathes, the soil from which he garners food, as well as all the chemicals and compounds in that water, air and soil. At a level so basic that even the most disturbed consciousness is present, everything (and everybody) living on earth is composed of the same earth, water and air and all their disturbances, additives, pollutants, synthetic compounds, radiated cells, mutations and genetic manipulations that daily compound and unquestionably violate the integrity of the planet.
Environmentalists and others who care more about Earth and its inhabitants than the standard of living (not to be confused with quality of life) that can be wrested from them, must continue to address the practical issues of which industries, practices, chemicals and land uses are destructive, and what are better ways of living on the earth. The disturbance at a more basic level of consciousness to which Berry refers needs addressing. This disturbance needs discussion, exploration and the light of day on a planet with integrity Why are we so reluctant to admit to ourselves or think about that disturbance?
A good place to start seeking answers and subsequent action is to ask. “Am I truly moved by the beauty of the world? Do I honor the earth in a profound way?
If the answer is ‘yes’ your actions will be motivated by beauty and guided by honor.
If the answer is ‘no’ there are no words, no action, no integrity.
There are many translations of Buddhism’s Heart Sutra with slightly different versions of these words: “Form is emptiness, emptiness is also form.” This is a distillation of the basic teaching of Buddha that there is no abiding self. Each of us in this moment is an absolutely unique person, and, depending on the strength of our egos and understanding of the dharma, we grasp that person as if life itself depends on it. Such grasping of form is driven by fear and dualistic thinking. That is, viewing the world in the dualistic terms of me/you, us/them, mine/yours, mine mine mine me me me, the abiding me, is delusion, the antithesis of life. But there is nothing to grasp. We are not the same from one moment to the next.
Nothing abides and everything is insubstantial. There is no fixed self and there is no fixed universe and there is no fixed form. Form is emptiness and emptiness is also form, but we are habitually attached to form and to the concept of the duality of good/evil, better/worse, right/wrong. We seek something substantial to hang onto.
But everything, life itself, is fundamentally insubstantial. Nothing is our own. We are composed of and depend on a continually changing array of other people, animals, plants, soil, water, the earth, the sun, the moon and stars. Our very genes came from our parents, grandparents and ancestors going back in evolution to whatever creature first came out of the sea and even beyond that. Each of us is in some way affected by and in turn affects each other. We are continuously changed by the aging process, by the last book we read, the last film we saw, the food we eat and the malicious gossip we hear (and pass on), the most recent political debacle, the birdsong we listen to on a walk, a painting we see in a gallery, the laughter of a friend, the tears of a relative, a misunderstanding with a mate, the danger of environmental collapse, the death of someone we know, the smile of an infant. Each second we each are in some significant or subtle way different than the second past, as each of us and the multitudinous things of the universe continuously flow around and through each other in harmony.
The realization and experience that nothing abides and that everything is fundamentally insubstantial is a glimpse into the harmony that underlies and constantly flows through and between all beings. Everything is in harmony when we understand that nothing abides. Misuse of harmony through grasping is easily perceived in our daily lives on several scales of destructive behavior—-environmental degradation, nations threatened and destroyed, children and spouses abused, friends slandered and happiness exiled.
When sitting, we experience emptiness as the present awareness of the absence of thought and we experience form as the thought that arises from the condition of non-thought. Form and emptiness are polarities, but they are not dualities. They are aspects of each other, as we are each and all aspects of each other, none of them abiding.
The great Buddhist scholar Robert Thurman has written, “Our involvement with others does not begin with just our speech and physical movements. Each of us individually has an effect on the lives of beings around us through the quiet processes going on in our minds. If they are full of good feelings, they radiate around us and people want to be near. If we are full of bad feelings, others tend to stay away. So, if we would be activists for good, for the positive, we must assume responsibility for our minds as well as our speech and our physical activities, otherwise our negative mental habits will drag down the entire community of beings.”
Among those negative mental habits is the attempt to grasp a fixed self and to seek something substantial to hang onto. In our daily practice of sitting and what we take from that practice into our daily lives—our words, thoughts, actions and intentions—we gradually replace habit with practice. And a recent definition of ‘practice’ by Gary Snyder rings as true as the sound of the bell that begins and ends our sitting periods—“a deliberate, sustained and conscious effort to be more finely tuned to ourselves and the way the world actually is.”
And in the world as it actually is there is no abiding self.
“In spite of the dangers evident in modern forms of war, a revolt from boredom has had much to do with the fact that it is possible to launch these wars. Man was designed by nature to hunt, to struggle, to endure, and to achieve on a personal physical plane; all his glands and hormones are integrated for such dangerous and exciting affairs. It is not normal for the creature to immolate himself for eight or ten hours a day, five or six days a week, in the acrid din of factories, where he is fairly secure but where he does the same one thing forever.”
Philip Wylie, “Generation of Vipers” 1942
This quote found its way into my journals in 1963, and I have often referred to it and thought about its implications for my country and my countrymen during the past 55 years. History is nothing if not repetitive, as evidenced in George Santayana’s well known observation: “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” As Donald Trump threatens to launch wars our country does not need, cannot justify and that a significant number of its more patriotic and thoughtful citizens neither want nor support, it is worth remembering these words of Philip Wylie’s. (It is also worth emphasizing that patriotism is not the purview of only the hawk, the flag waver and the overly obeisant.)
“In spite of the dangers of modern forms of war…” These words were written in 1942, when the technology of waging war was far less dangerous (though no less brutal) than the weapons of ‘modern’ warfare. But they are timeless words that could have been uttered in 30,000 BC, when man the hunter was developing the first primitive bow, in 8000 BC when the walls of Jericho were built to protect the city from marauders, or in 3000 BC when the Romans began using oval shields in war and in Mesopotania where the first helmets for warriors were made of copper, arsenic and bronze. Mesopotania is often referred to as the cradle of the first known human ‘civilization,’ as evidenced by the fact that those helmets of war were padded. Interestingly enough, the cradle of the first civilization encompassed what is now the country of Iraq.
Things change but the dangers of modern war are only different in scale from what they were in the cradle of civilization in 3000 BC. To paraphrase Gertrude Stein, a war is a war is a war.
“…a revolt from boredom has had much to do with the fact that it is possible to launch these wars.” Think of lives so empty that a revolt from boredom into the barbarity that is war is seen as a viable option, keeping in mind that wars are always launched by old men and women and fought by young ones. Old men and women using young ones as weapons and cannon fodder are the practical mechanics of war. The young men who flew the planes of 9/11 were put there by old ones, just as the youth who will die in the next conflict will be put there by the aged. To revolt against boredom is, of course, healthy and honorable, but to replace boredom with war is unconscionable and really unimaginative. The next war will be fought neither by the old men who will launch it nor, for the most part, by their children, but, rather, by someone else’s children. That, too, makes it easier to launch a war.
“Man was designed by nature to hunt, to struggle, to endure, and to achieve on a personal physical plane……” That man is deeply out of touch with nature’s designs, including his own, is evidenced in the state of the world’s environment and man’s cities, obesity rates in the U.S. and malnutrition rates in all too much of the rest of the world, the rates of antidepressant and opioid use in the developed nations, escalating species extinctions and ozone holes in the southern hemisphere and acid rain the northern hemisphere, among other things.
“It is not normal for the creature to immolate himself for eight or ten hours a day, five or six days a week, in the acrid din of factories, where he is fairly secure…..” It is not normal, but many people who live such a ‘normal’ life and many more who have lost it are all too willing to march (and fly and sail and sit before small screens in tiny offices eight or ten hours a day guiding drones half a world away that drop bombs on defenseless citizens) according to the orders of those old men and women, most of whom have never been to war.
War should be a last resort, not a precautionary slaughter.
In his Noble Peace Prize acceptance speech in 2002 former President Jimmy Carter observed, “War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good.”
If war is never a good, always an evil, sometimes a necessary evil, what does that make an unnecessary war? What does it reveal about old men and women who would launch such a war? What does it divulge about young citizens so bored with normal life that they would trade it in for the dangerous and exciting affair that is war?
I think of the landscape of western America as varied, beautiful, wild and damaged, bountiful and poisoned as any on earth. As an inhabitant of western America, I view its landscape—mountains, deserts, rivers, lakes, streams, forests, rock walls, glaciers, canyons, meadows, ocean and bays—as a priceless gift of indescribable beauty and significance to the lives of all its inhabitants.
Wolf, bear, cougar, coyote, marmot, eagle, hawk, rabbit, snake, lizard, tortoise, frog, fish, beetle, elk, fox, human, moose, bison, deer, owl, mouse antelope and ptarmigan are of and formed by and conscious of the landscape in which they live and die.
As are you.
As am I.
Of and formed by and conscious of the landscape in which we live and die.
What we do to the landscape we do to ourselves.
What we make of the landscape we make of ourselves.
Think of that.
We are what we eat, as the old teaching has it. More, we are also what we do in order to eat as well as what we do to the landscape in order to eat. And we are what we see and do not see in the landscape around us.
The landscape is our oldest, best, most reliable teacher. Look around: the longer, closer and more carefully you contemplate the landscape the more it will tell you—about its current state and about yourself.
I grew up with the Sierra Nevada and the great open desert to the east as my boyhood playground, but I don’t remember contemplating any of it as anything other than a backdrop and field for my personal endeavors until I was in college. That seems strange in some ways, but, like many people of that age and time, I was immature beyond my years and barely conscious if that of many things that constituted and formed my life. It was a great time and I enjoyed it, but consciousness of the world (the landscape) and personal pleasure and endeavor are quite different matters. The reader may know others who could be so described. It need not be a terminal state.
Though, like all learning, it was multi-faceted and more complex than a single teacher and class, a freshman art appreciation class at the University of Nevada helped me learn to appreciate more than art. At that time I was not at all interested in art and took electives according to the time of day they were offered so that I could ski in the afternoons. It was my good fortune that Craig Sheppard’s art appreciation class fit my ski time aspirations. Sheppard, a fine, well-known western artist, was the kind of person and teacher that inspired attention. I liked him in part because it was clear he knew things about his subject and about life that other teachers did not, or at least were not able to communicate to me. Sheppard showed me (us?) that art could be a door of perception, a tool of understanding and a connection to the world as perceived and expressed by the artist.
Art Appreciation 101 covered the history of art, but Sheppard himself painted landscapes of Nevada, among other things. His work touched and moved me more than, say, reproductions of Botticelli, Rubens or even DaVinci, and I never viewed the landscape of Nevada quite the same after my initial exposure to Craig Sheppard. I was of that landscape, as was Sheppard the artist, and I responded to the way he expressed and honored that connection. It would be years before I could put words to that response and connection. A few years later I spent several days walking around the countryside near Arles in southern France and realized that I would not have seen the landscape the way I did without knowing the work of Van Gogh. I would not have been interested in landscape or Van Gogh had I not taken a basic art appreciation class from Sheppard and been introduced to his own work.
These days I favor the lovely lithographs and oils of Russell Chatham. I never tire of them and I often see Chathams in many places in the western landscape in which I live and through which I move.
Sheppard died in 1978. Since then the western landscape has shrunk. It has suffered abundant destruction and indignities, too obvious and numerous to need mentioning. I wonder what Sheppard would think and how he would paint today’s western landscape that we are all of and formed by and at least at some primordial level conscious of?